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An Optimized Translation Process and Its Application to ALGOL 68 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)
Posted: September 20th, 2008, 6:21am CEST

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In the late sixties, the definition of ALGOL 68 I 11 , for a long time called ALGOL X, reached some stability. It is at that period (1967) our team started the project of writing a compiler for that language. We had two goals in mind : (I) to make significant research in the field of compiler methodology, (2) to point out the special difficulties encountered in the design of the compiler and thus possibly influence the definition of the language.

This book is concerned with the first goal only ; ALGOL 68 should be considered a support to explain and develop compiling principles and techniques.

The whole book is directly based on the actual compiler we have written for the Electrologica-X8 computer ; this compiler has been operational since early 1973o Since May 1975, it is available on the "BS-computer", the Philips prototype developed by MBLE and which is at the origin of the UNIDATA 7720. In fact, the X8 has been microprogrammed on the BS [22] ; it is worthwhile to mention that microprogramming did not introduce any significant loss in efficiency.

The book does not require a very deep knowledge of ALGOL 68 except in some special cases described here for the sake of completeness only. The reading of some general description of the language as provided by 117] is however assumed.